


Between The Lost Boy and Tiger Lily

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts when Mike finds a Starburst wrapper in between the pages of Fahrenheit 451.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between The Lost Boy and Tiger Lily

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Glee Rare Pairs Challenge.

It starts when Mike finds a Starburst wrapper in between the pages of  _Fahrenheit 451._  
  
It’s not his placeholder. He uses a bookmark like the rest of the civilized world – his has a firefighter on it, which is funny, since he’s reading about a guy who starts fires. He likes the irony of it.  
  
But now there’s this Starburst wrapper, a  _used_  Starburst wrapper, sitting between two pages he hasn’t gotten to on his fourteenth reread and he’s equal parts confused and appalled.   
  
First of all, the book is public library property. Something like anger flares in the center of his chest for a moment but he tempers it. All things considered, the book is in good condition, for being a library book. Maybe it’s because this book is out of place, tucked away in a corner of the building where no one ever really goes.   
  
He found the spot in eighth grade, on a field trip where some old lady with a screechy voice explained the Dewey Decimal system to a bunch of bored kids. No one noticed him sneak away to see if the next  _Animorphs_  book was in yet – he’d been waiting for forever, but Scott C., whoever that was, hadn’t brought it back yet. That was probably going to be a three dollar fine. Mike couldn’t believe it. He got all turned around and mixed up his lefts and his rights because there were so many books to look at and ended up in a dusty corner of the library, staring at a small paperback with fire on the cover. He cracked it open, started reading because  _why not?_  and almost missed the bus back to school. He wonders how someone else stumbled on the small armchair in the corner and picked out the same book he did. But maybe they just got lucky, the same way he got lucky almost four years ago, and they’re finding out how awesome the library is, if you give it a chance.  
  
And now someone has found his secret place, read his book,  _and_  left their candy wrapper inside.  
  
He crumples the wrapper in one fist, shoving it into his pocket, and opens the book to where he left off.  
  
 _“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…”_  
  
\---  
  
The next wrapper he finds isn’t a wrapper at all. It’s a folded note pushed so hard into the spine of  _Perks of Being a Wallflower_  that Mike has to work at pulling it out. It’s folded almost a hundred times so Mike waits, trying to finish the chapter before reading the note. But it’s just sitting on the small table next to the chair he’s in and it’s tempting – like a fortune cookie. He always eats his first because he can’t wait until he finishes his lunch special – so he gives in.  
  
 _Doesn’t this book make you sad?_  
  
He frowns at the note. What kind of question is that? Of course the book makes him sad. It’s classic, and stuff, but he always gets really teary towards the end, and that poem hits him in the gut, hard.  
  
Mike folds the note back up and unfolds it again, staring at the handwriting, trying to figure it out. It’s not Finn’s or Puck’s or any of the other football players, he doesn’t think. It’s not Brittany – she’s all bubbles and swirls and little hearts over the letter “I.” And it’s not Santana, because she writes on a slant, the way she curls her left hand around the paper. He’s not really sure who else it could be, but he doesn’t really pay attention to any other girl’s handwriting. Only Santana and Brittany let him cheat off them in History anyway.  
  
Slowly, he pulls a pen out of his pocket and uncaps it. The tip hovers over the paper for a moment before he starts writing.  
  
 _I think it’s supposed to. But I think it’s good anyway._  
  
He shakes his head but folds the note back up and shoves it back into the spine of the book, folds over the page he stops at and puts it back on the special shelf he’s got. He’s running late for ballroom dancing, so he leaves wondering if he really wants someone to write back or not.  
  
\---  
  
He starts passing notes with the mystery person.   
  
They go through an entire month of  _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ , commenting on their favorite parts and leaving each other notes about The Smiths’ albums. He’s never really listened to The Smiths before and he loves “Asleep” as soon as he hears it.  
  
After  _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ , they choose  _Animal Farm_  and then he picks  _Of Mice and Men_  and the mystery person picks  _Franny and Zooey_  and Mike decides the mystery person is his new best friend. J.D. Salinger is his favorite and in the next note, he asks if they’ve ever read “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish” and adds that it should be next.  
  
Mike figures out that it’s a girl and it throws him for a loop. Maybe it shouldn’t, because they always talk about how books make them  _feel_  and the little details in the setting and the subtext and stuff and not a lot of guys do that. Well, besides him, obviously. But most of the other guys don’t really care about things like how maybe Seymour had that book that Franny carries around in  _Franny and Zooey_  with him at the beach in “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish.”  
  
But Mike does. And so does his mystery person. No, Mystery  _Girl_.  
  
\---  
  
Somewhere between  _The Sound and the Fury_  and  _1984_ , Mike realizes that he’s kind of best friends with this girl he doesn’t know. And once he realizes that, he realizes that he’s maybe sort of kind of in love with this girl he doesn’t know.  
  
It’s strange, since all he knows about her is that they have the same taste in books and music. In his mind, she has a body and a shape and he can see books in her hands but her face is so blurry he can’t even guess what she looks like. Sometimes, in his dreams, she has brown hair or blonde hair and he thinks her eyes might be blue or green but they keep changing every time he tries to focus a little more. She’s like a kaleidoscope that he keeps changing without meaning to.  
  
He walks down the hallways, an old copy of  _The Pearl_  in his back pocket, checking the faces of every girl that walks by to see if they do anything. Maybe she’ll wink or smile at him, but nothing is different. Brittany bounces down the hall, her pinkie wrapped around Santana’s, pulling her through the crowd. Rachel ducks under the arm of Finn and marches in the other direction ‘cause they broke up this week. Tina pushes Artie around a trash can in the middle of the hallway while Mercedes just glares at the obstruction before going around it too. A couple other Cheerios skip by him but they ignore him like they usually do. Quinn almost runs into him, staring down into a binder, but Mike dances out of her way and she doesn’t even notice him. He’s so confused, scanning the faces of girls for anything and getting no clue as to who keeps writing him notes.  
  
After school, he ducks into the library and picks their book ( _Peter Pan_ ) up, a note he wrote in Math burning a hole in his pocket. Looking around, making sure no one is watching, even if no one is ever looking in this corner, he fishes the note out of his pocket and thrusts it in between The Lost Boys and Tiger Lily, snapping the book shut before he can change his mind.  
  
Late at night, while he tries to read  _The Stranger_ , all he can think about is that note and how maybe he shouldn’t have written it and how maybe she’ll say no.  
  
 _Would you like to go out with me sometime?_  
  
\---  
  
The notes stop after that.   
  
Like, he goes back to the library, his stomach twisting in a way that makes him think maybe his appendix burst and the note is gone. He dances a little in the middle of the aisle to shake out the tension before he opens  _The Stranger_  and the note is gone. But when he comes back again, and a third time and a fourth, there’s never any note. Mystery Girl’s page marker – a Harry Potter bookmark – hasn’t moved a single page since he left the note there.   
  
He panics. He shouldn’t have written that note. He should have just left it alone and read books with Mystery Girl and left it at that. Instead, he went and messed it all up by having feelings and stuff.  
  
So he avoids the corner in the library and just checks out a handful of books. Mike figures they’ll last him until summer, at least, and he’ll never have to go back there again.  
  
Not that he knows who she is, but still.  
  
\---  
  
Mike finds another place to call his own. There’s a small office off of the dance room and he has to clean the cobwebs out of the corners first, but he checks with Figgins and gets the okay and claims it as his. There’re two old couches and a mirror and he brings some lamps and stacks his books on the desk. It’s almost like the library, but better. At least, that’s what he tells himself.  
  
He’s always the last one in Glee, so he can sneak back into the room and get some reading done before he goes home and he thought he was being sneaky. Brittany calls him a ninja and she’s not wrong. He slinks around corners and sneaks behind half-closed doors and he’s pretty freakin’ awesome at it.  
  
But one night, after a long rehearsal where Rachel just shouted at a super high pitch, he gets lazy and almost slinks around a corner right into Quinn. He almost opens his mouth to apologize when he notices what she’s holding in her hand and then the words get stuck in his throat.  
  
“Where’d you get that?” he finally squeaks out, frowning.  
  
Quinn pulls  _Farhenhiet 451_  close to her chest as if she’s trying to hide the heavy plastic library-eque covering. Mike is only wondering because  _he_ checked that book out and that means he’s responsible for it and Quinn just stole it from his stack in the back room…  
  
His eyes widen. “How did you find that?”  
  
Quinn smiles at him hesitantly. “You checked it out of the library.”  
  
“I was going to return it,” he said quickly. “But I’m not done reading it yet.”  
  
She opens the book to where he put his bookmark. It’s the first Starburst wrapper. He laminated it and it hadn’t felt like it was a weird thing to do until right now, ‘cause Quinn is holding it between her two fingers like it’s a dirty gym sock or something.  
  
“That’s mine,” he says weakly, looking away from her, over her shoulder.  
  
“I think it was mine first,” Quinn says quietly.  
  
It doesn’t click for Mike at first. He kind of stares at Quinn, wondering why she would say that – the wrapper clearly belongs to him. He even etched his initials into the corner of laminate because his cousins always stole his stuff when he was younger. So he doesn’t get it. How can it be Quinn’s? How can it be…  
  
Mike feels the air whoosh out of his lungs. It’s  _Quinn’s_. The wrapper belongs to  _Quinn_. The Mystery Girl is  _Quinn Fabray_.  
  
He’s not sure what to say to her right now. He maybe should have known it was her, because she’s always sitting in the back of the choir room, reading a book and it’s kind of a flashing red light. But he never pictured her and it must show on his face, because she’s laughing softly – the way really cute girls laugh – and shrugging a little.  
  
“You write your name on your bookmarks. It was easy to figure out who you were,” she explains. Quinn takes a step closer to him, tucking the laminated wrapper back between the pages he stopped on, but not closing the book. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve read together…”  
  
Mike nods, his eyes still a little wide because she’s standing so close and holding that book and  _Quinn_  is the girl he’s been crushing on.  
  
“But I wanted to give something back to you and…” Quinn trails off again, reaching into the side of her bag and pulling out a piece of paper, folded a couple of times into a square, and puts it in front of the bookmark, snapping the book shut. She smiles a little crookedly, holding the book out to him.  
  
He takes it, his fingers brushing hers. Slowly, he opens the book again, glancing between the note and Quinn.  
  
“What does it say?” he asks, pretending like he isn’t hoping it says what he thinks it says.  
  
Quinn just smiles and lifts up on her toes a little, stepping past him, their shoulder’s brushing gently but it feels like she bowls him over, that’s how much he feels it. His hands are shaking as he unfolds the note and by the time he gets it undone, she’s already gone down the hall and around the corner.  
  
As he reads the words he feels like Charlie from  _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ , when he gets to kiss Sam for the first time, or when he stood in the back of the truck in the tunnel, his arms outstretched and his body braced against the cab while Patrick went faster and faster, that infinite feeling that Charlie talked about that made Mike want to be infinite too.   
  
He wants his one infinite moment and Quinn Fabray’s answer feels as she might be it.  
  
He grins and pushes the note back into the book, tucking the book under his arm. Maybe he’ll read  _Fahrenheit 451_  later, after he catches up with Quinn and ask if he can escort her to the library.


End file.
